Difference between revisions of "Second War of Insolence"

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The Second War of Insolence was a war fought between Pantocratoria and the United Provinces of Knootoss from 1713 to 1715.

Prelude

The First War of Insolence had humiliated Pantocratoria and demonstrated the superiority of Knootian naval power. The war had demonstrated the vitality and determination of the United Provinces of Knootoss as a modern state and great player on the world stage, and Pantocratoria's defeat had conversely demonstrated the decay of the aging Byzantine system. However, at the start of the 18th Century, a revolution was occuring in Pantocratorian society, brought about by the young Emperor Manuel V. Coming to the throne at the age of seven in 1699, he grew up the idol of the court and his ego took on the proportions of a living demi-god. Declaring himself an adult in 1712, Manuel V longed to reshape the entire world to his whim, starting with Pantocratoria. He employed artists, experts, artisans, architects, shipwrights, and military thinkers from Europe, particularly from France, and turned the Empire on its head. Obsessed with modernity, he even forced his people to abandon the Greek language they had spoken for a thousand years - the past and all its failures would be cast aside, from now on there would only be Manuel the demi-god, his vision and his accomplishments! Naturally, this social revolution couldn't have happened in isolation. In 1703, the Fourth Pantocratorian Crusade had (predictably) failed to capture Constantinople, but it had made contact with the modern world, and after it returned it was soon followed by a flood of foreign ambassadors and ideas. Emperor Manuel V had taken these foreign ideas and innovations and set about forcing them on his own country with the enthusiasm that only a young man certain of his own infallibility could muster.

Manuel V's shining glory still had one long shadow cast over it - the ignominy of the defeat of the Pantocratorian Imperial Navy in the War of Insolence. Determined to emerge from that shadow, the Emperor ordered the building of a modern navy according to the designs of his panel of foreign experts. Simply rebuilding the navy wasn't enough, however - Manuel had to demonstrate the superiority of his new navy by defeating the nation which had defeated it fifty years before. He determined to provoke a war with United Provinces of Knootoss, and ordered a squadron of his new ships to set about scouring the seas for Knootian targets (even though his new navy was still nowhere near completion).

In August, 1713, the squadron came across a Knootian payroll ship, Meerpaal, and two escorts. After saluting the Knootian colours, the Pantocratorian squadron opened fire while the Knootians were returning the salute. After a brief but bloody skirmish, one escort was sunk, the other left a burning wreck, and the Meerpaal was forced to surrender. It was brought back to New Constantinople, where Emperor Manuel V hosted a public fête celebrating the victory, in which he appeared dressed as the pagan god of the sea, Neptune. It was then decided to return the Meerpaal with its cargo of gold coins under the terms of the treaty which ended the War of Insolence - more or less. The ship was towed back to the Knootoss in the dead of night and cut loose - the Pantocratorian ship which towed it slipping away before the Knootians even had a chance to board the Meerpaal. When they did board it, they found a scene of horror. The crew of the Meerpaal had been executed, and their bodies were hanging from the ship's mast and beams. The ship's cargo of gold coins had been returned - melted down and recast as a statue of Emperor Manuel, and in the hands of the statue was a Pantocratorian naval ensign soaked in the blood of the murdered crew. The outraged people of the United Provinces screamed for the outrage to be avenged, and clamoured for the blood of the young upstart Emperor, whose defaced statue was dragged through the muddy streets of The Hague.

During the second War of Insolence the United Provinces had also entered its second Stadtholderless Era, which would last for nearly fifty years. The regents had suffered from a loss of power under the powerful leadership of Prince Jan of Knootcap the first, and with his passing they declared the stadtholdership vacant for the second time, using a quarrel about the title Prince of Knootcap between several contestants as an excuse.

Economically, the once mighty Republic had started a long but steady decline, with heavy competition over colonies and trade monopolies with some of the new rising powers. The lives of the regents themselves had not yet been affected, and they spent ever more funds into maintaining their comfortable lifestyle with grand summerhouses by the waterside and works of art glorifying themselves and the familiar Knootian life, all instead of investing in the daring journeys of the Knootian East India Company or – worse even- to contribute to a centralistic army and navy for the entire nation. A central army had always been seen by the regents as an instrument of power for the princes, and with the princes gone the power as well as the organisation of the military was transferred to the provinces and cities themselves, in whose richly adorned Houses resounded only the voices of the regents: the merchants and those rich enough to buy themselves titles of nobility.

At the same time, unrest was growing amongst the people in the Provinces and already some fights had erupted in between the common people (with whom the House of Knootcap was still popular) and city guards led by the regents. Dutch Reformed churches were split as well, with some churches preaching a more sober and Calvinistic approach to life – implicitly condemning the extravagance of the regents. As the Staten-Generaal met, the regents were faced with a diabolical dilemma. The state of the Navy was dreadful after budgets for the building of new ships had been cut significantly, and they realised that they were facing a war they were likely to lose.

The War

Raid on New Jerusalem and the Battle of the Long Night

Despite the fact that Pantocratoria had deliberately provoked the Second War of Insolence, Manuel V's new navy was far from completed at the outbreak of official hostilities. It was generally held by Knootian naval strategists, therefore, that Knootoss' best chance for victory lay in scoring a crushing defeat against the still-incomplete Pantocratorian Imperial Navy in the early stages of the war. A fleet was hastily drawn together from the navies of the various cities and sailed to the Pantocratorian Archipelago to try to draw out the Imperial Navy. Although the Knootian fleet was numerically superior in the early stages of war to its opponent, this numeric superiority doesn't speak to real effectiveness of the fleet as a fighting force. Some ships were very old and in a state of disrepair, others were missing full-loads of cannon (which had been stripped from ships by various regents to provide cannons for land fortifications), and many had skeleton crews. The nevertheless formidible navy arrived in the Pantocratorian Archipelago and began interfering with shipping immediately. The Imperial Navy, however, would not be drawn out of New Constantinople to fight. On 21 October, 1713, the Knootian navy raided the harbour of New Jerusalem, destroyed the naval works there, and seized the bastion at the mouth of the harbour. The Imperial Navy had to respond - the bastion would allow the Knootians to control the vital straits between the Exarchate of New Jerusalem and the mainland.

Over November, 1713, the Exarch's troops laid siege to the bastion by land, but the combined guns of the bastion and the Knootian navy made it impossible to erect siegeworks on the necessary scale to breach the walls. Under the command of the French Admiral de Marly, one of Manuel V's foreign experts, the Imperial Navy engaged the Knootians (under the command of YOUR ADMIRAL HERE) on 15 November, 1713, in the dead of night (so as to minimise the effect of the superior firepower from the bastion). The Exarch of New Jerusalem's troops reinitiated the siege as the ships of the two opposing fleets fought in the frost and darkness of the long night. The sea battle was inconclusive, but at some point during the night the Knootian flag over the bastion had been shot down by a rogue cannon ball. When dawn broke, it appeared as if the bastion had fallen (although it had in fact, repelled the Exarch's troops once again). Panic broke out amongst the Knootian fleet, which fled in fear of the bastion's guns being brought to bear against them in the daylight. Once the fleet had withdrawn, the defenders of the bastion surrendered to the Exarch of New Jerusalem, who was so impressed with their valiant defence of the fortress during the long and bloody night that he offered commissions in his house guard to any who would accept, and later named the bastion after their commander, BASTION COMMANDER NAME HERE. The engagement cost several hundred lives, twelve Pantocratorian ships and seven Knootian ones - on paper the Knootians had done more damage, but they had been driven off, and Te Deums were sung in churches throughout Pantocratoria to celebrate the Empire's victory in the Battle of the Long Night.

The Christmas Campaign

The Knootian fleet sailed through the straits of New Jerusalem and anchored at the northern most islands of the Pantocratorian Archipelago to effect repairs. Although their casualties had been comparitively light, their badly equipped fleet was now dangerously low on ammunition, and enough Knootian sailors had fallen (either in battle or to scurvy) that many ships could no longer be adequately crewed. Eight further ships were abandoned (and were later found and refitted by the Pantocratorians), and their men, cannons, powder and supplies were shared out amongst the rest of the fleet. They were spotted on Christmas Day by a Pantocratorian flotilla, and left harbour before their repairs were complete, heading into the Atlantic. The Imperial Navy pursued them, and the two fleets engaged several times over the next twelve days. Three more Knootian ships were sunk, but most importantly, YOUR ADMIRAL HERE was killed. The disparate and demoralised Knootian fleet lost any semblence of organisation as political rivals all vied for command. The Knootian fleet eventually broke into two groups, the first under the command of SENSIBLE ADMIRAL, who had argued for the fleet to return to Knootoss, and the second under the command of INCREDIBLY UNSENSIBLE ADMIRAL, who wanted to effect repairs, and fight on. INCREDIBLY UNSENSIBLE ADMIRAL sailed with his ships to the Excalbian Isles, where they sought safe harbour to effect repairs, whilst SENSIBLE ADMIRAL's ships returned to Europe. The Imperial Navy elected to concentrate its efforts on dealing with INCREDIBLY UNSENSIBLE ADMIRAL, and so SENSIBLE ADMIRAL escaped without further losses.

TO BE COMPLETED